Fernwood Press

11/20/2024

Support independent literary publishers by picking a read from the list below, which features new books published in November 2024 from CLMP members.   Unmoored by Elizabeth Burk TRP: The University Press of SHSU | November 1, 2024 This poetry collection is “a poetic memoir of a life well-lived a...

10/30/2024

Laura Foley honors Cather’s sentiments as she paints pictures with words borne on wings from her own quiet center. Foley’s work is intellectually significant, emotionally satisfying and precisely crafted. https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1098691201846946&set=a.579194347129970

It's This
by Laura Foley
Fernwood Press, 2024
62 Poems ~ 97 pages
ISBN #: 978-1-59498-103-6Review by Michael Escoubas

As I began reading Laura Foley’s stunning new volume, It’s This, my mind wandered toward the work of another thoughtful author: Willa Cather. Cather, one of the early 20th century’s most awarded novelists, offers two quotations which inspired this review:

“There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.”

And

“The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.”

Laura Foley honors Cather’s sentiments as she paints pictures with words borne on wings from her own quiet center. Foley’s work is intellectually significant, emotionally satisfying and precisely crafted.

“Prayer,” although it appears late (page 85) in the volume, sets the kind of tone envisioned by Cather:

Give us this morning of wet grass,
of geese landing over us,
feet dangling as they drop
to the rippling pond.
Give us this bowl of mung beans,
These olives from Spain,
this garlic and kale—nourish us,
so we may be worthy,
this quiet May morning,
so we may learn
to surrender
all of it with grace

This poem speaks to me because of its plea to live in and enjoy the present moment, but also counsels the reality of a future surrender of that moment. Foley’s “life in reality” approach resonates. All of this and more stirs, within the poem, a silent mantra captured by four simple words, Let me be worthy.

In an age where some poets approach their work and their readers with political and social “axes to grind”—Laura Foley’s work refreshes my spirit.

Foley finds poetry in intricate details: “Ode to a Wasp,” a mere six lines becomes a profound meditation on death:

You dove into my hot chai—
I’m sorry you died,
though at least it was brief
and cinnamon sweet.
I wonder if I
will be so blessed.

There is sensitivity to pain in Laura Foley’s work. I like her approach: Foley looks pain in the face but never capitulates. “Then” provides ample evidence:

The human world
kicks you in the head
again and again—

so you must seek beyond the No,
the song of dried beech leaves
ringing in the brittle wind,

a hollow tone to shiver you
like a tuning fork,
so the healing bell inside yourself

will resound, in quietness,
with Yes
and Yes and Yes.

Among the features that stand out to me is Foley’s skill in using the visible natural as an accurate register of the invisible spiritual world of people. I’m struck by “the song of dried beech leaves,” as a response to the “human world / that “kicks you in the head,” “like a tuning fork, so the healing bell inside yourself / will resound, in quietness.”

In “Spring Treachery,” the poet falls on slippery ice, injured, as she grabs a seemingly innocent hemlock tree—(palms, arms, and legs get bruised)—corresponds to those unexpected hurts delivered by those we assumed trustworthy.

In “Lost and Found,” the poet, on her sophomore science field trip becomes mesmerized looking at crabs, snails, starfish, and other sea-life. She is filled with joy by natural things; they become part of her in moments no words can tell. The intimate experience corresponds to our throw and go world bereft of “losing oneself in the world of tiny shifting things.”

It's This captures the spirit of Willa Cather’s “calm in the storm,” as well as Cather’s self-effacement. Foley’s life is one of ongoing respect that another’s “heart is a dark forest, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.”

I am honored to say that Laura Foley’s profound engagement with life, her generosity of heart, shines forth in a volume I will proudly display on my bookshelf.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER - Michael Escoubas is Senior Editor, Contributing Poet, and Staff Book Reviewer for Quill and Parchment, a 23-year-old literary and cultural arts online journal. This review is republished with kind permission from Quill and Parchment.

Posted October 1, 2024

10/11/2024

For National Hispanic Heritage Month, observed annually from September 15 to October 15, we asked our members to share with us some of the literature they recommend reading in celebration. (Learn more about National Hispanic Heritage Month here.)   Drama, Hybrid & Nonfiction   The Hurricane Book: ...

09/14/2024

Support independent literary publishers by picking a read from the list below, which features new books published in September 2024 from CLMP members.   The Autobiography of Rain by Lana Hechtman Ayers Fernwood Press | September 1, 2024 These poems “explore the healing powers of art and nature in...

09/08/2024

Newport poet Lana Hechtman Ayers’s distinctive style combines dreaminess, pathos and wordsmithery, and always makes for therapeutic reading. Her latest poetry collection, “The Autobiography of Rain,” offers more than three score poems that nourish and enchant. While deeply personal, as the title suggests, this volume also contains truths that will resonate with just about everyone.

Newport poet Lana Hechtman Ayers’s distinctive style combines dreaminess, pathos and wordsmithery, and always makes for therapeutic reading.

09/05/2024

They remind me, in my writing, to follow my muse—my pleasure—and to pay no mind to those who tell me what I am supposed to create or write or do with my life. Other times they remind me, in my writing, to follow my grief. To get down into the tidal muck of life’s disappointments to remind others they are not alone in their own disappointments.

Reimagining reality. Poets are free spirits and truth tellers who write to get at the root of a matter, to better understand...

09/04/2024

As beautiful to the touch as this book is, Lana Hechtman Ayers' work is not only full of velvet wishes but sharp remembrances of friends and favorite historical figures. There are tributes to Patricia Fargnoli (a friend and mentor), John Lennon, Van Gogh and the ever-turning color wheel of life. She reminisces about her father, mother, brother, but these poems are also descants and descendants of other poems. They are full of the ache of loneliness, but are never loveless.

As beautiful to the touch as this book is, Lana Hechtman Ayers' work is not only full of velvet wishes but sharp remembrances of friends and favorite historical figures. There are tributes to Patricia Fargnoli (a friend and mentor), John Lennon, Van Gogh and the ever-turning color wheel of life. She

08/26/2024

Do you ever really look at another person, or do you find yourself glancing away too quickly, without really seeing? Annie Lighthart reads a single poem from a collection I published several years ago. And it's beautiful. I hope you'll watch and listen

The act of paying attention seems rather simple - simply being aware of life happening all around us. And yet most of us are asleep at the wheel. Our habit i...

08/20/2024

Without being didactic, Toby Goostree presents all of the implications of the very real trials of hopeful parents trying to conceive a child, their attitudes, their hope and their despair, their grief (“Oh, foolish plans! / Oh, smug house in a good school district!” he writes in “The Scratch”). But There’s So Much DIY in IVF That We Can’t Be Sure underscores all of these very human responses.

Book Reviews, Poetry Reviews A review of But There’s So Much DIY in IVF That We Can’t Be Sure by Toby Goostree August 15, 2024 Reviewed by Charles Rammelkamp But There’s So Much DIY in IVF That We Can’t Be Sure by Toby Goostree Fernwood Press May 2024, $16.30, 70 pages, ISBN: 978-1594981296 ...

07/03/2024

"I kept looking around to see who else was in the room, who gets to speak, who is silent, what else is happening out-of-frame, what happens if we shine the spotlight away from the supposed main characters."

An interview at Christian Feminism Today between two of our writers: Elisabeth Mehl Greene and Joann Renee Boswell

Poets Elisabeth Mehl Greene and Joann Renee Boswell discuss their books of poetry, Tobit Detours and Meta-Verse!

07/02/2024

The journey represents a leap of faith and willingness to turn life upside down -

Bethany Lee’s ‘Close to the Surface’ and ‘The Coracle and The Copper Bell’ released in May by Fernwood Press

06/06/2024

Wild Apples by Tricia Knoll
Fernwood Press, 2024
96 pages
ISBN 978-1-59498-116-6
Review by Marie Asner

Tricia Knoll is a poet of many talents. This not only includes writing but being able to transplant oneself from the west coast to Vermont. Forests, animals in those forests, nature still at ease and quiet all-around, leads to writing poetry with a flourish. Then came How I Learned To Be White (won the 2018 Human Relations Indie Book Award for Motivational Poetry) and Let’s Hear It for The Horses (won the third-place award in The Poetry Box 2021 chapbook competition). Wild Apples is Tricia Knoll’s latest publication.

In reading through this poetry collection, one will find three styles of writing. There is giving the reader a story without paragraphs, such as “Thirty Things A Poet Should Know” and “some poets are buried in cathedrals, some are laid to rest in pauper’s fields.”

Then there are two-lines-at-a-time poems, where two lines may be separate in thought. “Alonely” and “Alumni makes you realize how many friends have died.” Or:” Questions” and “How much closure can you expect from sewing on a button?”

The third style has, four-to-six-line verses such as “Why Move?” and

Vermont is where my daughter is the girl
Who brought home the first deer one fall
When the men drove north to deep camps
She tagged unblemished roadkill’s pathway.
Freshest deer the butcher ever skinned.

Wild Apples is easy to follow, easy to understand, easy to picture in one’s mind what the writer is telling you, and easy to go back and read again and again. The title poem, “Wild Apples” compares oneself to a ripening apple. The aging process is “…sweet, then tart…. before it vinegars.” Short and sweet in size, but large in life. One can sense the awe of the writer as she melds into a new life with snow and ice, a new style of house to live in, having relatives nearby and then – joy- a grandson is born. This poem was written about watching an infant being fed. “Celestial Milk” and “His mother is his star and this season’s constant moon. I’m a secondary, hovering Milky Way.” Once again, it takes only a few words to form a picture.

Wild Apples certainly makes Vermont a place you would want to see for yourself. Up in the north eastern part of America, one can only think of maple syrup. Such is not the case here, and the poem descriptions of life there is picturesque. There is no mighty ocean nearby such as one could have in Oregon by water’s edge, here is the edge of the edge of forest and its mysteries. “In Praise of Silent Wing” speaks for itself:

My forester explains owl silence
On hunt as stealth in wing beat
Mix of serrations and velvety
Down fringe feathers than
Suck up turbulence. And noise.

This poetry collection is well structured so the reader doesn’t have to spend time looking for something, it is all there in order. A multitude of diversities to choose from. What a delight.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Marie Asner balances a life of being a poet, freelance writer, church musician, book reviewer and entertainment reviewer.

Posted May 1, 2024

05/23/2024

We're so proud of this book and super excited about this review!

Wild Apples by Tricia Knoll
Fernwood Press, 2024
96 pages
ISBN 978-1-59498-116-6
Review by Marie Asner

Tricia Knoll is a poet of many talents. This not only includes writing but being able to transplant oneself from the west coast to Vermont. Forests, animals in those forests, nature still at ease and quiet all-around, leads to writing poetry with a flourish. Then came How I Learned To Be White (won the 2018 Human Relations Indie Book Award for Motivational Poetry) and Let’s Hear It for The Horses (won the third-place award in The Poetry Box 2021 chapbook competition). Wild Apples is Tricia Knoll’s latest publication.

In reading through this poetry collection, one will find three styles of writing. There is giving the reader a story without paragraphs, such as “Thirty Things A Poet Should Know” and “some poets are buried in cathedrals, some are laid to rest in pauper’s fields.”

Then there are two-lines-at-a-time poems, where two lines may be separate in thought. “Alonely” and “Alumni makes you realize how many friends have died.” Or:” Questions” and “How much closure can you expect from sewing on a button?”

The third style has, four-to-six-line verses such as “Why Move?” and

Vermont is where my daughter is the girl
Who brought home the first deer one fall
When the men drove north to deep camps
She tagged unblemished roadkill’s pathway.
Freshest deer the butcher ever skinned.

Wild Apples is easy to follow, easy to understand, easy to picture in one’s mind what the writer is telling you, and easy to go back and read again and again. The title poem, “Wild Apples” compares oneself to a ripening apple. The aging process is “…sweet, then tart…. before it vinegars.” Short and sweet in size, but large in life. One can sense the awe of the writer as she melds into a new life with snow and ice, a new style of house to live in, having relatives nearby and then – joy- a grandson is born. This poem was written about watching an infant being fed. “Celestial Milk” and “His mother is his star and this season’s constant moon. I’m a secondary, hovering Milky Way.” Once again, it takes only a few words to form a picture.

Wild Apples certainly makes Vermont a place you would want to see for yourself. Up in the north eastern part of America, one can only think of maple syrup. Such is not the case here, and the poem descriptions of life there is picturesque. There is no mighty ocean nearby such as one could have in Oregon by water’s edge, here is the edge of the edge of forest and its mysteries. “In Praise of Silent Wing” speaks for itself:

My forester explains owl silence
On hunt as stealth in wing beat
Mix of serrations and velvety
Down fringe feathers than
Suck up turbulence. And noise.

This poetry collection is well structured so the reader doesn’t have to spend time looking for something, it is all there in order. A multitude of diversities to choose from. What a delight.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER: Marie Asner balances a life of being a poet, freelance writer, church musician, book reviewer and entertainment reviewer.

Posted May 1, 2024